Gloria Estefan Shares 'Complicated' Reason She Didn't Want Daughter to Come Out to Grandmother

Gloria Estefan is explaining why she didn't want daughter Emily Estefan to come out as gay in front of her grandmother.

In a sit-down interview with CNN's Chris Wallace, the queen of Latin pop said that revealing her sexuality to her elderly relative would have been "complicated" for a number of personal reasons.

"In the Latin community, a lot of these subjects aren't touched, they're taboo," Estefan, 65, shared with Wallace. "People see — but they don't want to talk about it, they don't want to see it."

"Emily, I thought, would feel comfortable coming out to me," the Cuban superstar said of her musician daughter, 27, who revealed that Estefan was "reluctant to have her come out to her grandmother" before her death, in an episode of Red Table Talk: The Estefans.

"We've been very very open about the support for the LGBTQ community our entire lives and at the same time, I had a mother with ulcerative colitis that even if I brought up a bill — or something that was not even important — would get very upset," she added about Gloria Fajardo, who died in 2017 aged 88.

"We're all just families trying to get through the difficult moments in life," she continued. "Life is complicated, life is tough."

The Estefans' Facebook Watch series is a spin-off of Red Table Talk, executive produced by Jada Pinkett Smith and Westbrook Studios.

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Ahead of the family's series premiere back in 2020, Estefan — who has been married to Emilio Estefan, Emily's father, since 1975 — told PEOPLE how excited she was to collaborate with her daughter and her television host-model niece Lili Estefan, 55.

"We should be shooting by March, and all three of us are so excited because we get along very well," Gloria said. "It's three generations of women with our own points of view which may surprise people who think they know what we will say."

"The girls and I will talk about everything from motherhood to spirituality, social media and sexuality," she added. "My daughter Emily came out last year, so I think this is a good topic for families to hear because sex is a subject they don't like to discuss."

For National Coming Out day in 2020, Emily shared an encouraging tribute for all of her fans.

"Be you. Be kind. Be better," she wrote. "Be open, be careful if you feel unsafe, be LOVE. Anything else is icing ... Happy love day... because that should be every. Single. Day."